ADD-Friendly Computing: Macintosh or Hackintosh

I’m an artist in my offline life, so I have a ton of graphics files on my computer.  Every time I touch it I receive ominous warnings about how my start-up disk is is almost full, and I need to delete some files Right Now or everything will go boom.

Fortunately, I recently inherited a new computer.  My cunning plan is to use one computer for my online life — blogging, etc — and the other for my offline, artsy, graphic-intensive life.  That means transferring files and programs from one computer to another.

It’s times like this that I’m glad I have a Mac.  For most of my life, I was stuck using obsolete hand-me-down PCs.  They were slow, difficult to use, and I had to keep track of what I named, and where I stored, each and every file — this was hardly an ADD-friendly system.  I couldn’t even use YouTube on my last computer without crashing it.

In my experience, Macs are more searchable than PCs.  I don’t have to worry about exactly what my file name is, or where I put it, as long as I get one of the words right.  It’s also much easier to transfer files from various locations, because you can just click and drag.  It’s all visual, right there in front of you.

The downside, of course, is that Macs are expensive.  A new MacBook is $900 if you’re lucky.  A new PC laptop can be had for as low as $148.  Enter the Hackintosh.  This is a clever innovation, brought to you by geeks, which allows you to install MacOS on your PC.

I’m writing about this because, as I was working with my two computers, I realized how much easier my life is now that I have a Mac.  I don’t mean to come off all fan-girl, but I’m definitely one of those people who Macs are made for.  People with ADD are known for skipping the instruction manual.  I’m also artsy, I’m a visual person, and I like my technology to work for me without a lot of effort on my part.

Before I got my Mac, I checked my e-mail once a day if that.  I considered myself a grudging technology user.  I never would have considered myself competent to run a blog, for example.  Now I’m on my computer all the time.  I use it for all kinds of things, from photo editing to making comics to animation.  It’s like an extension of my brain.  The fact that I can store information on my computer, and access it quickly and easily, means that I don’t have to keep track of all kinds of papers in my offline life.  I don’t have an address book, phone lists, or a rolodex.  I don’t have stacks of business cards and papers.  There’s just my computer, where I can get whatever I need whenever I need it.  I’m a lot less stressed, and my house stays a lot cleaner.  I consider my Mac to be one of the most important pieces of adaptive technology I own.

For those who can’t shell out for a Mac, or who just don’t want to, the Hackintosh is worth a gander.   My husband, who is a geek, did this project for about $400.  If you’re not a geek yourself, you may need to find one to help you with it, but in my experience, geeks can be easily bribed with food.